When Shall I Regain Thy Presence?

Yesterday my five-year-old son asked me, “Dad, who made Jesus?” I responded, “Heavenly Father did.” He looked back at me with an expression that said, “I don’t believe you” and replied with these words, “But Heavenly Father is Jesus!” It is not surprising that he considers Them one and the same given how we speak of Them in very similar terms as we encourage our children to faith in Their perfect character and power to help us. Recently I went to a work conference and there were in attendance two former colleagues of mine who I had never met in person. I know that they were brothers but I did not realize that they were identical twins. It was just about impossible to tell them apart—they were dressed in the same suit, and their hair, beards, and everything else looked identical as they stood next to each other. I suppose that some day when we return to our Father in Heaven we will find that the same is true for Him and His Beloved Son: they will each appear in their glorified state in the express image of the other. That is how they appear in the most famous image of the First Vision: They are indistinguishable. Philip once asked the Savior, “Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us.” He responded, “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?” (John 14:9-10) To the Nephites the Savior similarly said, “I am in the Father, and the Father in me, and the Father and I are one” (3 Nephi 11:27). In our dispensation He repeated the same thing: “I am in the Father, and the Father in me, and the Father and I are one—The Father because he gave me of his fulness, and the Son because I was in the world and made flesh my tabernacle, and dwelt among the sons of men.” John testified, “He received a fulness of the glory of the Father; And he received all power, both in heaven and on earth, and the glory of the Father was with him, for he dwelt in him” (Doctrine and Covenants 93:16-17). The Savior has received the fulness of the glory of the Father, receiving all that the Father hath like we may also receive in some distant time if we fully receive the Savior. Often we do not distinguish between the Father and the Son in our gospel discussions because they are so perfectly unified that their actions, power, love, justice, mercy, and all other essential characteristics are the same.

               In that same section we find this powerful statement from the Savior: “And now, verily I say unto you, I was in the beginning with the Father, and am the Firstborn; And all those who are begotten through me are partakers of the glory of the same, and are the church of the Firstborn. Ye were also in the beginning with the Father; that which is Spirit, even the Spirit of truth” (Doctrine and Covenants 93:21-23). The Savior was, in the beginning with the Father and was the Firstborn in the Spirit. But we too were in the beginning with the Father—we saw Him and knew Him and learned from Him as Eliza R. Snow suggested so beautifully in the hymn O My Father: 

O my Father, thou that dwellest

In the high and glorious place,

When shall I regain thy presence

And again behold thy face?

In thy holy habitation,

Did my spirit once reside?

In my first primeval childhood

Was I nurtured near thy side? 

Our primeval childhood was with Him, and so we strive here on earth to be able to return to Him some day. I love this statement from President Benson about what that will be like: “Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father and how familiar his face is to us.” And if that is true of the Father, surely it is true of the Savior whom we also knew in the premortal realms, He who is “the beginning and the end, the same which looked upon the wide expanse of eternity, and all the seraphic hosts of heaven, before the world was made” (Doctrine and Covenants 38:1). We long for the day when we can indeed regain His presence and the company of His divine Son.